[Gnu-arch-users] Using Arch to track non-Arch upstreams

[Mark A. Flacy]

>>>>> "John" == John Goerzen <address@hidden> writes:
John> 
John> Hello,
John> One of the most common problems that I run into with tools like Arch,
John> cvs, and subversion is tracking upstreams that have no public version
John> tracking system or are using one that I'm not.  They usually
John> distribute either diffs from one version to the next, or just put out
John> tarballs of each version.

Well, that's one reason for configs used by tla/arch.

John> 
John> With some relatively stable projects, this is not terribly difficult
John> with most version control systems, including Arch.
John> 
John> With some others, especially large ones, the task gets much more
John> complicated.  Files and directories get added, deleted, renamed, and
John> moved, and tracking changes across those actions can be difficult.
John> 
John> Subversion comes with a script called svn_load_dirs that I can use
John> when importing new versions of such upstreams.  It will identify the
John> additions, deletions, and renames and let me manually match up the old
John> version with the new.  The tool stinks, but it's better than nothing.
John> (It essentially runs "svn cp", "svn mv", etc. behind the scenes.)
John> 
John> Arch doesn't have such a tool.  Moreover, I'd think that putting
John> taglines in the source file would be a recipe for disaster.  When a
John> file moves and you're using diffs or tarballs from upstream, there is
John> essentially a delete of the old file and an add of the new -- and that
John> doesn't preserve local changes.

That's the problem that the use of taglines *solves*, much less be a
"recipe for disaster".  It appears to me that you have a fundamental
misunderstanding of taglines under tla/arch.

FWIW, you have "tla changeset" and "tla deltapatch" to compute changesets,
which you can tar up and distribute.  You then have "tla do-changeset" to
apply the changeset to a source.


-- 
 Mark A. Flacy
 Any opinions expressed above are my own.  Any facts expressed above
 would imply that I know what I'm writing about.  Sometimes, I do!
"If we work harder, will obsolescence be farther ahead or closer?"
 -- Unknown